Larkin's muse gives the last laugh to God

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Always an agnostic - but an Anglican agnostic

Philip Larkin may well be turning in his grave. The woman who was the late poet's muse and, for nearly 40 years, his mistress has left £1m to the Church of England.

Larkin, who had bequeathed her the bulk of his estate, was an agnostic and frequently highly acerbic about religion. On reading the Bible, he declared: "It's absolutely bloody amazing to think that anyone could ever have believed that – absolute balls."

But Larkin's mistress, Monica Jones, who died in February last year, has divided £1m from her estate between St Paul's Cathedral in London, Durham Cathedral, and Hexham Abbey, Northumberland.

Clearly, religion was not something the couple agreed upon. Larkin would have approved of other bequests she made, however. He was nostalgic for what he saw as the vanishing countryside; and Ms Jones has also left a large sum to the National Trust.

A spokesman for St Paul's said: "We are obviously very sad that Monica Jones has died. But we are delighted that she thought of us in her will. For years we have been thinking of setting up some form of endowment to look after the fabric of the cathedral, and this money will form the basis of it."

Ms Jones was left most of Larkin's estate when he died in 1985. She ordered 30 volumes of the poet's private diaries and papers to be burnt after his death 17 years ago, but his other papers and writings have been left to Oxford University's Bodleian library and are to be made public.

The couple's relationship blossomed after they met in 1947 at Leicester University, where Larkin worked in the library for a time and she was a lecturer. They later moved to Hull, where Larkin became the head librarian.

The four-bedroomed house in Hull in which they lived was put up for sale at the end of last year. She had inherited the house, which Larkin claimed gave him writer's block and variously described as being "the wrong shape", "fearfully graceless" and an "utterly undistinguished little house".

A spokeswoman for Larkin's publishers, Faber, said: "He had a number of powerful relationships with women. But Monica Jones was certainly a very lengthy one, and her influence was significant." Faber is shortly to publish an early, unseen novella by Larkin entitled Trouble At Willow Gables, described by its publishers as "extremely sexy". It was written before he met Ms Jones.

Friends who spoke about Ms Jones after her death last year painted a picture of an outstanding teacher and a highly interesting woman; but there was nothing to suggest a deeply religious bent in the published obituaries.

She provoked ambivalent reactions among Larkin's friends. These were evident in the two representations of her in fiction. Margaret Peel in Lucky Jim was a malicious portrait which, astonishingly, Larkin allowed his close friend Kingsley Amis to put into print. Malcolm Bradbury (a former student) offered a friendlier depiction of Ms Jones in his roman-à-clef set in Leicester, Eating People Is Wrong.

The writer, John Sutherland, who was a student of hers, recalled her memorable lecturing technique, saying: "Her first lecture to the first year was on Wuthering Heights. She came in, dressed to the nines under her Oxford gown, slammed down a Timex alarm clock on the lectern and tore into Emily Brontë for her incredible perversity in calling so many of her characters by the same names. Wholly inconsiderate. It was very funny ... and meant to be."